


you are the reason i've been waiting so long

by amosanguis



Series: soul-bond/soulmates AUs [16]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Canonical Temporary Character Death, Last Words AU, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, title from a song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 11:25:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8444026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amosanguis/pseuds/amosanguis
Summary: Spock gets the first set of words as he’s walking out of the Vulcan Science Academy – had felt the start of their being burnt into his skin as he’d said, “To what disadvantage are you referring?”





	1. Spock

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Can't Find My Way Home" by Blind Faith.

-z-

 

Spock gets the first set of words as he’s walking out of the Vulcan Science Academy – had felt the start of their being burnt into his skin as he’d said, “To what disadvantage are you referring?”

Later, when he’s alone but for his mother watching carefully from across the room, he pulls up his sleeve and sees **_I want you know why I couldn’t let you die_** and **_why I went back for you_** wrapped around his forearm in two circles; the Standard handwriting military neat.

“I’m sorry,” his mother says, her eyes closing as she puts her hand to her mouth.  Amanda moves her hand to her chest as she says, “I had hoped you would be spared this part of my,” she pauses, looking for the right word.  When she can’t find it, she settles on, “This part of me.”

Spock had hoped the same, had calculated the odds over and over.  And as he stares down at the words – he knew that whoever was on the other end of them, whoever it was that wouldn’t let Spock die, who would come back for him was obviously so, so _human_.

Spock doesn’t say anything – he just pointedly rolls his sleeve down and slips quietly from the room.

 

-x-

 

Spock’s hands are wrapped around Kirk’s throat when he feels a second set of words being burnt just underneath the joint of his knee.

It only adds fuel to his rage.

 

-

 

“Most humans only have one set of words,” Sarek says when he’s caught up to Spock after Spock’s fight on the bridge.  Spock’s left pant leg is rolled up and the handwriting is the same as what’s on his right arm – just, _older_ somehow.  As if written with trembling hands.

**_I will see you again,_ t’hy’la _._**

Anger still burns hot in Spock’s blood as he turns to his father and asks, “What words did mother have to look at everyday while she waited for them to fall from your lips?”

“You know what they were,” Sarek says, his voice sounding empty even to Spock’s ears.

Spock looks down at his own words, remembering the flowing Vulcan script that went the length of his mother’s inner arm: **_We will be safe here._** He wonders what had crossed her mind when she heard Sarek say the words as they sat in the Katric Ark – he wonders if his father had even thought about the consequences of the words as he said them.

Spock lets his pant leg fall back down as he fights again for control over his emotions.  But everything was too thick, too hot around him; he hears his mother scream and Kirk gasp for breath and some distant echo of someone whispering _t’hy’la_.

 

-

 

**_I will see you again,_ t’hy’la.**

_T’hy’la_.

A sacred word; an old word meant to mean everything a Vulcan couldn’t express.  Spock wonders who it is that would make him feel so deeply.

(He remembers the feel of his hand around Kirk’s neck, remembers something seeping in from the contact – a remnant of a secondhand memory and there’s that whisper again of someone saying the words that wrap around Spock’s leg.)

 

-x-

 

Nero is dead and Spock is looking at his much older self when his fingers go involuntarily to his right arm.

“May I ask if you have two—” he starts.

“I do,” Spock Prime answers.  He hesitates, as if struggling with something before he adds, “But because your journey is yours alone, I will not tell you why this is.”

If Spock were a lesser creature, he would have argued.  Instead, he inclines his head in a small bow and says nothing.

 

-x-

 

“You violated the Prime Directive,” Spock says, still trying to believe he was in the transporter room instead of an active volcano.

“So they saw us, big deal,” Kirk says, too nonchalant.

Spock purses his lips and ignores the way the words on his arm throb (they’ve been doing that a lot recently and none of the academic literature seems to be able to adequately explain _why_ ).

 

-

 

Spock looks into the eyes of Khan Noonien Singh and his words _burn_.

 

-

 

“How’s our ship?” Jim asks and Spock knows that this is it – his body is aching, yes, but there’s something deep inside of him that just _hurts_.

“Out of danger,” he responds, he reaches desperately for any semblance of his previous control – and so much has happened, they – the _Enterprise_ , her crew, Spock himself – have all won so much, but, if there was any truth to Scotty’s words (“You’ll flood the compartment,” he’d said, hating himself), they were about to lose so much more.

Spock wants to scream because flashes of white hot pain are starting to radiate from the words on his forearm, pulsing out new waves of the pain in tandem with his heartbeat.  He feels as if he were being torn in two starting at where his words connected with his soul and where they showed themselves across his skin.

“I’m scared, Spock,” Jim is saying, his breaths becoming more shallow, more erratic.  Then he’s looking straight up at Spock, searching as he says, “Help me not to be.  How do you chose not to feel?”

“I do not know,” Spock answers, trying again to reach for his control, for logic, for _something_ to anchor him down and help him drown out the pain.  “Right now, I am failing.”

“I want you to know why I couldn’t let you die,” Jim says (and panic is rising in Spock’s throat – an emotion so foreign he doesn’t recognize it at first; he tries to shake his head, tries to stop Jim from saying the rest, but he’s too late), “why I went back for you.”

“Because you are my friend,” Spock says; _my t’hy’la_ , he doesn’t add.  And there’s recognition in Jim face, and Spock sees exactly when it all clicks for him and they’ve no time now.  Because Spock may have a second set of words, but if this is how things end with Jim, he’d rather carve the words out – he had no desire to go through this a second time.

(Vulcans may have been long-lived, but something still twists inside of Spock thinking of having a second soulmate who wasn’t Jim.)

He wants so badly to touch – to press himself against Jim and pretend.  Then Jim is putting his hand to the glass and Spock doesn’t hesitate to bring his fingers up to meet him.  He stares at their hands, not touching and yet touching – and Spock knows then that this is all he’ll get.

He tries to say something else, but he’s stuck.  Then Jim’s hand is falling away and his pupils are blown death-wide.

And finally, _finally_ , Spock has grasped something to anchor himself with.

Rage.

 

-

 

“He can save Kirk!”

 

-

 

Suddenly, Jim is back and he reaching towards Spock and Spock doesn’t hold anything back – he ducks his head down and kisses Jim as he lies on that hospital bed.

He hears again that echo of _t’hy’la_ and knows then that this was it.  That his second words are still Jim’s.

“ _T’hy’la_ ,” he says.

“Right back at you,” Jim says, pulling Spock in for another kiss.

 

-z-

 

End.


	2. Kirk

-z-

 

**_Because you are my friend._ **

Jim runs his fingers over the words; they’re freshly formed and still sting.  He wonders just what the hell kind of last words these were.

 

-

 

His mother’s drunk (again) and Jim has already successfully secreted Sam away to the neighbor’s; he’s trying to be quiet as he sneaks back towards his room.

Jim’s tip-toeing past the living room when he looks over, see’s Winona clutching her thigh and sobbing brokenly.

Through her splayed fingers, Jim reads, **_I love you; I love you so_**.

(“He tried to say ‘I love you so much’,” she’d said the first time she showed Jim the words that staggered down her thigh.  “He tried – but,” she didn’t finish the sentence.  When Jim is older and he reads about what happened – he knows why.  Can even understand why she had ended that particular conversation with a shot of whiskey, followed by five more.)

Jim tears his eyes away from his mother, and manages to avoid her attention.

 

-x-

 

Jim tears himself away from the old Vulcan, desperately trying to catch his breath around the raw agony in his chest, in his throat; fear, anger, grief, and, underneath all of that, a deep and overwhelming loneliness.

“Forgive me,” Not-Spock is saying – but Jim only hears an echoing _“I will see you again,_ t’hy’la _”_ and _“I have been, and always shall be, yours.”_

“We’re—” Jim tries to ask, waving between himself and Spock Prime.

“In my time, yes,” he says.  He looks as if he wants to say something else, but he never does.

Jim tears his eyes away and puts his hands on his knees, choking on a sob.

 

-

 

Saying the cruel things he does hurts more than Spock’s fists against his face, his ribs; they burn his throat more than Spock’s crushing grip around his windpipe.

Jim hears “ _I will see you again,_ t’hy’la” and he wants to ask for Spock’s forgiveness – wants to tell him he’s sorry, that he’s doing this on an order.

Then Spock is gone and Jim is in command.

 

-

 

Jim chokes on a scream in the dead of night as **_As you say, so it will be, t’hy’la_** carves its way onto his skin.

 

-x-

 

It takes time, but Jim is eventually able to bury the echoes of Spock Prime’s feelings.

Sometimes, he still feels like he’s missing something.  And there are days where he aches to pull Spock close before he remembers that they’re not there – and probably never will be.

 

-x-

 

People talk all the time about how they’ll never say the tattooed words of their significant others – except it’s inevitable.

 

-

 

Negotiations on a diplomatic mission go very wrong, very quickly and the _Enterprise_ is too far away to help.  Jim is with two blue shirts, Julie Chu and Hilary Knight and whose wedding he’s just officiated three days ago, and Uhura, when the shooting starts and he only just gets them all out of the building and into the neighboring forest.

But it’s too late.

Jim watches as Hilary dies in her wife’s arms.

“I’m sorry,” Julie’s saying, sobbing as she tries to stop the blood.

“We had a good run,” Hilary says. 

 

-

 

“I told her I’d never say I was sorry,” Julie says, looking up at Jim as they prepared for beaming.  “I promised her – and I did it anyway.  We thought, because – we thought maybe we had more time.  She said ‘we had a good run’ and we thought—”

Jim wraps his arms around her and holds her close – getting Hilary’s blood and Julie’s tears on his uniform.  There was nothing he could say that would make this better, so he stayed silent.

So much of who they are as a species is built around the things they _say_ , and for Jim to have no words to offer only adds to his guilt.  (He should’ve seen how rapidly the situation was deteriorating, he should’ve gotten them out quicker, he should’ve made sure the _Enterprise_ stayed closer – so many things he _should_ have done; and Jim has nothing to say.)

 

-

 

“Because you are my friend,” Spock says.

If he could – Jim would’ve laughed.  Instead, he puts his hand up to the glass, does his best to imitate the salute Spock uses.  He tries to say something else – but his throat’s closing up and the world’s dimming around the edges.

And then it all goes black.

 

-x-

 

Jim doesn’t wake with a gasp or any suddenness – it’s just a gradual awakening.  And Spock is right there – steady and warm and looking at Jim like he’s got all the answers.

Then Spock is leaning in and his lips are warm against Jim’s and Jim just thinks about his second words.  He looks down and his first words have faded just the slightest.

“ _T’hy’la_ ,” Spock says.

“Right back at you,” Jim says, pulling Spock in for another kiss.

 

-z-

 

End.


End file.
